What we know, and what we don’t

If you visit a website that uses benmetrics

The website’s owner wants to know how many people visit and what they read. We count that for them without learning who you are. No cookie is set, and nothing is saved on your phone or computer.

What is recorded about a visit

• The pages you opened on that website.
• The website that sent you there, without anything after the “?” in its address.
• Campaign tags in the link you followed, if it had any.
• Your country and region.
• Whether you used a phone, a tablet or a computer, and which browser and operating system, in broad terms only.
• How long each page was open.
• Any named events the website’s owner chooses to send, such as “Signed up”. What goes in those is up to them.

What is never recorded

• Your IP address.
• Cookies, or anything else stored on your device.
• Your name, email address or any login.
• Your town, city or exact location.
• The detailed description of itself that your browser sends with every request.
• Anything that would let us recognise you on another website, or on another day.

How you are counted without being identified

So that one person isn’t counted twice in a day, your visit is given a scrambled number. It is made from your IP address, your browser’s description of itself, the website you are on, and a random key that exists for that day only. Your IP address and browser description are used for that moment, and to work out your country, then discarded. They are never stored with your visit.

After the day ends the key is deleted. Without it nobody, us included, can work the number back to you or tell that tomorrow’s visitor is the same person. The number is different on every website, so you can’t be followed from one site to another.

How long it is kept

The record of each individual visit is deleted after 25 months. The daily totals worked out from them, such as “312 visitors on 4 March”, are kept so the website’s owner can look back over the years.

If you have a benmetrics account

• What we hold. Your name, your email address, and your password in a scrambled form that can’t be read back, by us or anyone else. Plus the websites you have added and the time zone you chose for each.
• Cookies. Signing in uses cookies, and only for that: one keeps you signed in, one stops other websites submitting forms in your name, and there is one more if you tick “Keep me signed in”. There are no advertising or tracking cookies.
• Your IP address. benmetrics does not save your IP address or browser details against your account or your sign-ins.
• Email. We email you to confirm your address when you sign up, and if you ask to reset your password.
• Removing a website. When you remove a website from your account, its statistics are deleted within the hour.
• Deleting your account. You can delete your account yourself, from the account page. Your sign-in and your websites go straight away, and their statistics within the hour.

If you are just visiting this website

The public pages of this website set no cookies and load nothing from other companies’ servers. The fonts, styles and scripts all come from this address. We count visits to this website with benmetrics itself, in exactly the way described above.

Words for your own privacy policy

If your website uses benmetrics, your privacy policy should say so. You are welcome to use this.